PSG on the brink of European glory after a decade of lavish spending and Champions League failure

Project Paris has not come cheap for Qatar Sports Investments. At the last count, Paris Saint-Germain's owners had spent more than £820 million in transfer fees, recruited some of the world's most high-profile players and coaches and endured nothing but failure in the Champions League every season since buying the club in 2011.

But after cruising to a 3-0 semifinal victory against RB Leipzig on Tuesday, when superstar forwards Neymar and Kylian Mbappe both rose to the occasion with outstanding performances, PSG are now just 90 minutes from realising the dream of their ambitious and supremely wealthy owners by winning the Champions League and making all of the investment and heartache (and maybe even those financial fair play punishments dished out by UEFA) worth every bit of it.

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No team has been built to win the Champions League quite like PSG, not even Manchester City, whose Abu Dhabi owners have spent more than £1 billion on players since taking ownership of the club in 2008 and have yet to enjoy the satisfaction of even reaching the final. City have had to overcome stiff competition to earn success in England before even thinking about the Champions League, but PSG have become so utterly dominant in France since the Qatari takeover -- they have won seven of the past eight Ligue 1 titles -- that domestic commitments have become little more than preparatory competitions for the one that really matters.

PSG did not lavish a world-record €222m on Neymar in 2017 to maintain their grip on French football. Similarly, the €180m spent on Mbappe was not designed simply to weaken AS Monaco and diminish the biggest threat to the club's dominance of Ligue 1. Every signing and appointment since the world changed for PSG nine years ago has been done with Champions League success in mind.